Large volumes of paperwork are generated and used on a daily basis. For example, during the course of a typical court case many thousands of documents may be produced. Various businesses produce many documents in the normal course of their activities. The documents may be paper or computer documents, and may be text or images stored as audio, video, text or any combination. Storing, managing, and retrieving information from many disparate sources is a formidable task for many organizations. Problems such as misfiling or overlooking or poorly indexing documents may result in the effective loss of important information. Organizations devote considerable resources attempting to organize information in paper form in a logical way, yet still may be unable to find important documents when necessary.
Even if a database of knowledge is well organized, it may be difficult to access years later. For example, once a lawsuit or other project has concluded, documents and related information are typically stored in a long-term storage facility that may be difficult to access. A poor storage medium inhibits document access in later projects, even though documents are initially well-organized and indexed relative to an earlier time. Consequently, the knowledge may effectively be lost or may even have to be recreated at additional cost.
Many current records management systems, particularly those that manage documents in paper form, may be expensive and have narrow capabilities, particularly if they are organized using a restrictive storage system and/or indexing method.
In addition to records management and organizational problems, document authentication requirements may present additional difficulties. A considerable amount of time and money can be spent supporting a document validation system.
Some Knowledge or Document Management Systems are directed exclusively toward internal and restricted document management. Document management software allows users or user groups to check-in and check-out documents while tracking changes. This system provides an internal document processing and control system for a single enterprise that may not be amenable to multiple use and access. Some of these systems offer an Intranet solution for internal company document management. This is often an extension of a network client/server based computing system as customers start using ‘Intranets’ as the medium to share and use their resources. Since these companies require secure authentication by a user, the system cannot be used by those external to the system and thus document collaboration is only accomplished in a highly restricted environment.
Known systems presently in use for document management provide narrowly tailored applications for specific tasks, but lack flexibility and capability to provide a fully integrated solution for all documents to enable an organization or project to use and reuse documents. Thus, there is a need for a robust document management system with flexibilities and capabilities for multiple types of indexing, shared document accessing, access and security controls, access and use auditing/tracking, document verification, archiving and electronic filing.